Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
The Professor of department of Arabic Language and Literature, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabatabai University, Tehran. Iran.
2
Associate Professor, Department of Arabic Language and Literature, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabatabaei University, Tehran, Iran.
3
Assistant Professor of Department of Arabic Language and Literature, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabatabai University, Tehran, Iran.
4
Ph. D. Candidate of Department of Arabic Language and Literature, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabatabai University, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
The character of al-Ḥallāj has long inspired numerous literary works, yet al-Miskīnī al-Ṣaghīr’s play A Man Named Al-Ḥallāj offers a distinctive reading of this figure. This study examines al-Ḥallāj’s character in this Moroccan play, which reinterprets the life of the famous 3rd/9th-century Persian mystic from a modern perspective. The research problem lies in the fact that previous studies on al-Ḥallāj in dramatic literature—particularly Ṣalāḥ ʿAbd al-Ṣabūr’s The Tragedy of Al-Ḥallāj—have largely relied on Sufi or socio-political readings that present him as a victim, while neglecting a psychological analysis of his personality structure that could show his execution not as religious punishment but as an inevitable consequence of a personality that posed a structural threat to Abbasid power. Thus, using the descriptive-analytical method and the HEXACO six-factor model, this study analyzes twenty-seven utterances by al-Ḥallāj to uncover the playwright’s role in constructing his anti-oppression character and to show how the strategic use of Honesty-Humility, interacting with Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience, made him a threat to be eliminated. The results show that the playwright implicitly embedded the six factors within the linguistic layers of al-Ḥallāj’s speech, creating a psychological logic for his anti-oppressive actions through the blend of Honesty-Humility (sincerity and revolutionary humility) with political Extraversion, methodical Conscientiousness, and creative Openness to Experience. The interaction between Honesty-Humility and these factors shaped a personality that, within the power system of the text, transcended madness to become a conscious, integrated threat to the existing order. Significantly, the statistical correlation between Honesty-Humility and Openness to Experience (r = 0.45, p < 0.03) confirms that al-Ḥallāj’s moral integrity is a creative, legitimizing force that undermines Abbasid power through linguistic innovation and symbolic suggestion, while the interplay with Conscientiousness and Agreeableness shows that his revolutionary behavior is neither impulsive nor erratic.
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